Upgrade plans for my desktop PC

The Small Form Factor PC that I built last year is quite fast for almost all the things I do with it. But I love upgrading my PC just to experience what the latest and the greatest hardware has to offer. Sadly, things do not usually live up to my expectations, but that is a different story.

This story is about the potential upgrade path this particular PC offers.

Sadly, my options aren't vivid. The PC is built in such a way that a tangible increase in performance requires a substantial amount of spending, which sometimes defies the reasoning behind "building" a desktop PC.

Let me explain.

Video card

Let's look at the video card first, because as you probably know, I am a gamer. The video card is the most important component in a gaming PC. But, I am not the typical gamer you would find elsewhere, but that is for another discussion.

Right now, I have an overclocked MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G in my PC. To see a tangible increase in performance, I have to at least get a GTX 1070 and overclock it, which would give me 50% performance gains over my current card. But it would cost me close to $700 if I want to buy locally. $100 or so cheaper if I buy it from outside Australia, but it will make claiming for warranty painful. The GTX 1080 would give me twice the performance but it would cost me a whopping $1000 if bought locally! I am not going to spend that sort of money on a single piece of computer hardware, probably ever! But the GTX 1080 can be bought for less than $900 if I look to import it from outside.

From GTX 970 to GTX 970

Someone finally decided to grab my Gigabyte GTX 970 GAMING G1 card which I exhibited on Rakuten Auction. So it was time for me to choose a new graphics card that would fit inside the SG13 case. Even though the case is small, cards up to 10.5” in length would fit. However, there definitely are cards that won’t fit; cards like the Gigabyte GTX 970 Gaming G1 which is over 12 inches I length.

Obviously, I didn’t want to downgrade. Hence it had to be a GTX 970 or better. Due to high power consumption and heat generation, the AMD cards were out, although the R9 290x would perform better than a GTX 970 in general – at least at stock clocks. The GTX 970 would overclock better on the other hand. But there is still a good chance that you get a dud.